1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to cooking and grilling utensils and more specifically to a grilling tong designed to easily interface with a grilling pan also designed to interconnect with the tongs, the combination of which enables the tongs to also function as a handle for the grilling pan.
2. Description of the Related Art
Cooking vessels and the cooking utensils are essential equipment for the outdoor grilling enthusiast, Tong, forks, spatulas, grilling baskets of many different sizes and shape are known and useful to the outdoor grill cook. Often times the outdoor grill cook uses a grilling basket to grill such items as vegetables or chopped meat. These grilling baskets usually don't have long handles so that the lid of the grill cover can be closed to better cook the food. Because such grill baskets may be heated to high temperatures, they would benefit from having long handles to insulate the hot cooking basket making it safer and easier for the cook to pick up the basket. However, such a long handle though would make it impossible to close the grill cover. So a removable handle for grabbing and manipulating such items would be of benefit. However, a singular purpose device as a removable handle would be just one additional item for the cook to keep track of with all the other utensils grill cooks use while grilling. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a grilling utensil that can also be used as a removable handle for grilling basket. A review of the available art reveals that there are a number of cooking vessels with removable handles and also a number of grilling utensils.
For example U.S. Pat. No. 6,393,973 issued to Lionel Vela and Michel Montgelard on May 28, 2002 describes a cooking utensil comprising a bowl and a removable grip handle. This patent describes a bowl with a rim projecting outwards from the bowl sidewall with the rim containing an orifice for receiving a handle. The handle is designed to be inserted within the orifice to grip the rim of the bowl and the handle has a lower member to rest on the sidewall below where the handle grips the orifice that braces the handle providing a support for lifting the bowl. However, this removable handle can serve no other purpose.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,318,776 issued to Sang Ok Lee on Nov. 20, 2001 describes tongs for holding a cooking container. The tongs have a fixed holding part with a moving gripping part that together are situated opposed to each other. The space between the moving part and the fixed is sufficient to allow the wall of the cooking bowl to be placed between the fixed part and the moving part. The tongs are so designed such that when the tongs are closed, the operating lever built into the tongs will cause the moving part to close the gap with the fixed part until these two parts grip the bowl wall enabling the bowl to be lifted. The tongs also contain spring that will separate the moving part from the fixed part when hand pressure is no longer applied releasing the cooking bowl. These tongs should not be confused with grill tongs in that they do not have any capability for nor can they be used for such routine grilling functions as grabbing a hotdog, flipping a burger or otherwise manipulating any other food items.
The above two inventions disclose removable handles that can only be used as removable handles. These removable handles are just another item needed by the cook near the stove or grill. With the plethora of grilling utensils used by grill cooks such as grill forks, grill brush, spatulas, knives, tongs, etc., the grill cook often has trouble juggling the use of all these different utensils. Adding a removable handle to the mix of utensils will make the cook's job more difficult. While suffering from the above described disadvantage, these handles are also assemblies of many dedicated components that make them more expensive to manufacture.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a cooking utensil that can also be used as a removable handle that is also simple to manufacture.